Contact centers, which typically are associated with human agents, are used to provide customer service and support. Increasingly, contact center operations have been automated. However, automated systems can make it difficult for supervisors to use their experience with contact center operations and with the skills of individual agents to assist queues that are in-trouble. In addition, previous tools available to supervisors for analyzing and controlling contact center operations have been difficult to use and usually do not clearly present information regarding relevant attributes of contact center agents.
In connection with the operation of call centers, it is desirable to minimize caller wait times. In order to maintain service requirements, for example to avoid wait times that are too long, systems have been developed that reallocate agents automatically. Automatic systems have been inflexible, in that they rely on accurate and complete information regarding agent qualifications and queue requirements in order to move agents between queues. In addition, systems that operate autonomously do not benefit from the intuition and experience of human supervisors. Automatic systems can also be difficult to control manually and/or can provide inadequate manual control options. Other systems allow a supervisor to manually administer assignments. However, even systems that support manual control have limitations with respect to changes that can be entered by a supervisor, and can suffer from inadequate reporting of information related to the relevant characteristics or attributes of contact center agents. Moreover, previous systems do not provide a means by which a supervisor can assess which agents are the best candidates to assist a queue or skill in-trouble so that the supervisor can make appropriate real time changes to agent assignments.